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During Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo announced three new tablets in its IdeaPad range.

The newcomers will be “competitively priced”, and aimed at different segments of the market: the seven-inch A1000 and A3000 will appeal to users on a budget, while the premium 10-inch S6000 was designed to offer maximum performance in a thin and light package.

China, being the most populated country in the world, has become a hotbed for mobile device and smartphone usage. Consumer, business, and advertiser behaviours are quickly becoming assimilated and adaptive to the mobile gadget phenomenon. Mobile is now the new “cigarette”. Here there is a video created by GroupM Interaction showing facts about Chinese smartphone usage in 2011. [3:40 mins]

Some key facts:
– Android accounted 68% of China smartphones
– 360 million Chinese used the internet on their mobile devices
– 67% of Chinese take photos before eating and post them on social network
– Smartphone users in China check their gadgets every six minutes
– 38% of smartphone users spend more than 5 hours a day on their phone
– 92% of the youth use their mobile phones in the toilet!
– More than 1000 people daily start romantic relationships using their smartphones

According to Socialbakers’s report, in May, the Facebook Mobile application for mobile devices had 488 million users. Four months later, Facebook demonstrates the power of mobile by hitting 543 million monthly active users out of their 955 million strong Facebook community, resulting in a 57% penetration!

North America continues to be the strongest Facebook Mobile continent with over 161 million monthly active users and South Africa, Nigeria and Japan still rule the ranking of the countries with the highest Facebook Mobile penetration.

Facebook for Android has grown the most in absolute numbers (22.5 million new users) and iPad increased its mobile Facebook base by 45%! Now that Timeline is available for iPad, it will be interesting to see how the numbers grow. Let’s check more Socialbakers’s exclusive infographics!

Less than two weeks ago, Instagram tweeted a link to a page where Android users could sign up for the service and be notified the moment it’s made available. Well that wait wasn’t as long as people had anticipated as the popular photo sharing app has made available to download for Android devices.

With over 30 million iPhone owners using the service, Instagram has a massive user base to build from and it’s set to increase that number exponentially as it’s opened up to Android.

Time will tell whether the app will be as big a hit on Android as it is on iOS, but you can certainly bet that the app will gain a couple of million new users worldwide. Now all Instagram has to do is figure out a viable business model that takes advantage of this growing user base and they’ll be set. Android users can download the app on Google Play or head over to Instagram’s site.

If hardware is the backbone to any good smartphone, then apps have become the lifeblood with many consumers judging a device on what they’re able to download for it. Microsoft know this and because it’s playing catchup with its competitors, iPhone and Android, it’s turned towards funding developers to ensure apps are created for them.

The New York Times reports that Microsoft is financing the development of well known apps, costing anything between $60,000 to $600,000 depending on the complexity of the app. Developers are reluctant to dedicate time and money into a platform that is both small and unproven so Microsoft is adapting different methods to incentivise developers. Alongside funding their app’s development, the company also provides developers with free phones and the promise of prime spots in its app stores and in Windows Phone advertising

Microsoft only has an estimated 70,000 apps for its Windows Phone platform. Comparing that the iPhone has roughly more than 600,000 apps in its store and Android has almost 400,000 apps, the company is very much trying to bridge the gap between themselves and speed up the process. Their other initiative is teaming up with Nokia to open up an AppCampus in Finland, where over €18 million will be invested into the project over three years, but the company has a lot of work ahead of them if they seriously want to be in a position to challenge the big two.

Once upon a time RIM was the shining star of Canada. Hailing from the Great White North, BlackBerry phones were the country’sdominant smartphone. But times have changed and RIM has not changed with them. That’s a recipe for failure and it seems that based on data compiled by IDC and Bloomberg, Apple shipped more phones in Canada last year than RIM.

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM shipped just 2.08 million BlackBerry smartphones last year in Canada, where Apple shipped 2.85 million units. This changing of the guard is a long time coming. As Bloomberg notes, in 2010 RIM bested Apple by half a million units and outsold Apple five to one in 2008.

RIM is seeing sales declines worldwide. BlackBerrys are still popular in the Middle East and Indian markets but Android, led mostly by Samsung phones, is quickly becoming the dominant player. Canada, where the company is based, was one of RIM’s last strongholds.

Canadian sales dropped 23 percent in the third quarter. Even though RIM introduced seven new handsets in 2011, Canadian consumers turned their backs on their hometown team. Now, in 2012, with a new CEO in place, the company is betting that its QNX-powered BlackBerry 10 handsets will stop the bleeding.

RIM’s glory days are behind it. Sheer arrogance led the company down its current path of misery. All is not necessarily lost, however. As long as RIM can produce BB 10 handsets on schedule, it might still be able to save the lucrative enterprise market from defecting to iOS or Android. But “on schedule” is not a phrase associated with RIM lately.

Are you Team Coco? Sure you are. So check out your mobile options for keeping up with the latest from Conan O’Brien & crew. It’s like having a teeny-tiny late-night talk show with you at all times — in a sexy techno-gizmo that vibrates!
The iPad & Android tablet apps let you experience CONAN on TBS in a whole new way — on two screens. Use the “Sync” feature to receive app-exclusive content and conversation in real-time while watching the show. Of course, the tablet app also has the full episodes you want, plus all the latest video clips, photos, web exclusives and more. It’s the all-access Team Coco tablet experience you’ve been waiting for – available now!

Using StatCounter’s figures for mobile operating systems we charted the main mobile operating systems during 2011. To summarize, Symbian finished stronger than it started, iOS dropped a little bit, Android gained a lot, and BlackBerry was all but decimated.

A few notes about how the mobile OS market developed over 2011:

Symbian started and finished 2011 as the undisputed king of mobile OSs. Going from 30.25% in January to 33.59% in December, Symbian made a resurgence in the last two months of the year.

Apple may take in the bulk of the profits in the mobile industry but in terms of share of mobile operating systems it had a pretty flat 2011. Starting out with 25.02% it falls in the first six months and made a slight recovery to 22.56% in December.

The Google juggernaut that is Android made a considerable market share improvement from 14.61% to 21.74%. If this development keeps up it won’t be long until Android takes the number two spot from iOS, a position it held for a short time in August 2011.

The real loser in 2011 is RIM’s BlackBerry OS, which fell from 15.03% to 7.86%. Actually BlackBerry started the year just ahead of Android but fell steadily behind over the twelve months.

Samsung is obviously a major player in the Android space, but it showed up with both Samsung OS as well as bada, which finished 2011 with 5.62% and 0.5% respectively.